In this series we’ll take a fresh look at resources and how they are used. We’ll go beyond natural resources like air and water to look at how efficiency in raw materials can boost the bottom line and help the environment. We’ll also examine the circular economy and design for reuse — with an eye toward honoring those resources we do have.

While changes at home can’t solve the many environmental crises we face today, they can sure help. Through this series, we’ll explore how initiatives like curbside compost pick-up, rebates on compost bins, and efficient appliances can help families reduce their impact without breaking the bank.

Despite decades -- centuries even -- of global efforts, slavery can still be found not just on the high seas, but around the world and throughout various supply chains. Through this series on forced labor, sponsored by C&A Foundation, we’ll explore many different types of bonded and forced labor and highlight industries where this practice is alive and well today.

In this series we examine how companies should respond to national controversy like police violence and the BLM movement to best support employees and how can companies work to improve equality by increasing diversity in their ranks directly.

Compost is often considered a panacea for the United States’ tremendous food waste problem. Indeed, composting is a much better option than putting spoiled food in a garbage can destined for a landfill.

The ultra-thin, 40 percent transparent solar cells unveiled by German manufacturer Heliatek lend themselves perfectly to the integration between glass panes to help buildings become carbon neutral.

Imagine a world where every glass surface produces solar power. You’d wake up to the alarm on your fully-charged smartphone, pluck it off the windowsill and hop into a hot shower — courtesy of a solar water heating system powered by your enclosed patio. You stroll out to your electric vehicle and flip on the radio, powered by your sun roof, and head off to your net-zero office building — which skirts the grid thanks to its majestic floor-to-ceiling windows.

This scenario may sound like science fiction, but recent developments in solar technology suggest that it barely scratches the surface of where the industry may be headed in the coming decade. Earlier this week, German solar company Heliatek unveiled a 40 percent transparent organic solar cell that’s ideal for generating energy from windows, façades and glass car roofs.

The development holds potentially groundbreaking implications for the new generation of net-zero smart buildings, as well as the alleviation of electric vehicle range anxiety. The possibilities are diverse, but it may be a while before we see transparent cells in use on a large scale. Heliatek has achieved 7 percent efficiency on its latest cell. This is respectable compared to its world-leading 12 percent efficiency for opaque organic cells but still a far cry from the 44.7 percent efficiency achieved by the top-performing standard photovoltaic (PV) cell — made by fellow German manufacturer Fraunhofer.

Unlike standard solar cells, which are typically made from silicon, the production of Heliatek’s organic film is based on small molecules (oligomers) developed and synthesized at its lab in Ulm, Germany. Oligomers are deposited at low temperatures in a roll-to-roll vacuum process, and their selective absorption of the solar spectrum targets different colors and transparency to convert sunlight into electricity. This may prove to be a breadwinning technology in the long-run, but for now higher costs keep it in the “niche” category.

The key to Heliatek’s organic solar film is the family of small organic molecules – oligomers – developed and synthesized at its lab in Ulm, Germany.

While producing more efficient transparent cells, especially organic ones, may prove challenging, Dresden-based Heliatek sees promise in its latest development. The company has been open about its strategy to supply its transparent solar film to glass manufacturers for both building integration (BIPV) and car roofs. In a media release about this latest lab development, CEO Thibaud Le Séguillon went as far as to say that, “The transparency of our products is at the core of our market approach.”

In another attempt to bring a silicon-killer on the scene, the NTU cell is made from perovskite — a relatively inexpensive mineral composed of calcium titanate (titanate is a salt composed of titanium and oxygen). But a group of MIT researchers took things one step further, devising a way to manipulate E. coli bacteria to create self-repairing solar cells. Inspired by natural materials such as bone, the researchers coaxed bacterial cells to produce biofilms that can incorporate nonliving materials, such as gold nanoparticles and quantum dots. The addition of inorganic nanoparticles, particularly gold, made the bacteria conductive to electricity. This potentially paves the way for self-repairing, and even self-assembling, solar cells and batteries.

“It shows that indeed you can make cells that talk to each other and they can change the composition of the material over time,” says Timothy Lu, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and biological engineering at MIT and the senior author of a paper describing the discovery in the March 23 issue of Nature Materials. “Ultimately, we hope to emulate how natural systems, like bone, form. No one tells bone what to do, but it generates a material in response to environmental signals.”

While none of these developments are likely to revolutionize the solar industry in the short-term, they pull back the veil and give us a peek at what is sure to be a promising future; a future that’s likely inconceivable to us now. One thing is certain: The industry is already on the rise, with a 15 percent growth rate in the global solar PV market last year, and other savvy (though decidedly less sexy) developments in areas like smart energy storage are paving the way for what could be a whole new power source. There’s no telling what the future holds, but we’ll be watching.

Based in Philadelphia, Mary Mazzoni is the senior editor of TriplePundit. She is also a freelance journalist with a passion for storytelling and sustainability. Her work has appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News, Earth911, the Huffington Post, Sustainable Brands and the Daily Meal.

Mary is a lifelong vegetarian with an interest in climate resilience, clean tech and social justice. You can contact her at mary@triplepundit.com.

Seconded. See – and in your business bookmark – the regularly updated NREL chart for the record efficiencies of different types of lab cells. 44% is for an exotic triple-junction lab cell; its cousins in production are very expensive boutique products sold to NASA and the Pentagon, never found on ordinary rooftops. The highest efficiency in a production silicon panel is SunPower’s top monocrystalline line, I think at 21.5%. Fraunhofer is not a manufacturer but the huge German public civilian applied research agency, roughly a technology NIH.

Perhaps you want to look at the square meters (or centimeters …) of solar panels that might fit in a car roof and calculate the amount of generated electricity. The 100s of watts (perhaps) per day that might result will not do much to alleviate ‘range anxiety’.

Now, to be clear, I see reasons to want/value solar on some EV roofs (not, for example, a vehicle that spend 98+% of its time in garages) but the power these cells might generate will not replace plugging it into external power sources.